Stray Cats, Alley Cats
by Feirdra
Summary: When you take in a stray cat, you leave your soul behind. Shounen ai.


_Stray Cats, Alley Cats_  
  
-  
  
Light has leaked over the horizon, flooding the sky in a dim reminder of the coming morning, and everything's beginning to stir, just a little. The streets murmur, swept by the last of the wanton night/morning winds that have nothing to do with the weather and everything to do with how the plastic and cans in the streets rustle and roll. The crickets are singing.  
  
He didn't know crickets chirped until morning.  
  
Then again, Tachibana has never gotten up this early, not even to make the early-bird special at the most expensive restaurant in town (Sumire got plenty mad at him for that; it wasn't his fault--they served _curry_, for pity's sake). The fog that lingers in the air makes his mouth smoky and his skin ice, in a good way, and he wonders for a moment--but only a moment--why he never gets up early enough to see this most mornings.  
  
He's strolling lazily down the wall-lined streets toward the sea, hands in pockets, the ocean breeze riffling through his hair and bringing a tang of salt to the fog filling his mouth. He thinks idly that it must be kind of like swallowing dry ice and old seawater at the same time--hell of a lot more sanitary, though.  
  
Right now, Tachibana's not quite sure where he's going, but this early in the morning (and, really, any other time of day) he isn't in the mood to care. He finally realizes that he's actually heading somewhere, though, when he finds himself passing the same apartment complex about three times in a row. Scowling a little, once he remembers he actually knows someone _living_ there, he loiters around a bit, wondering if he should pay a little wake-up visit.  
  
_Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair._ The absurd little scenario pops into mind whole and disturbed, and Tachibana has to shake his head and snort with laughter. Well, Hiiragi's hair is certainly the right shade... or maybe he's just been watching too much TV lately. It's not his fault--there was a rerun marathon of his favorite show last Saturday.  
  
"Oy, moron. What the hell are you grinning about?" Speak of the devil--in all fairness, Hiiragi looks more like a Rapunzel than a devil right now. His hair is all mussed and looks longer than it really is (Tachibana has _no_ idea how that works), and he looks rumpled and tired and more than a little out of sorts at the moment. The perfect victim.  
  
Tachibana grins a little bigger, and Hiiragi looks a little more disturbed. "Good morning, Rapunzel."  
  
Hiiragi definitely looks disturbed now. "... I'm giving you two minutes to come up as a normal human being before I lock the door and throw away the key."  
  
"Awww, but you'll let down your hair, won't you?" Tachibana wheedles, trying to hold back his laughter, but Hiiragi has already turned away and has climbed the stairs out of hearing range. Tachibana pouts for about a minute before remembering that he's working within a time limit, which is no fun at all, but he just huffs and climbs the stairs anyway, grumbling and mumbling the whole way up. "Spoilsport. Party pooper. Dumb blond."  
  
"I heard that." Hiiragi is smirking at him from where he's leaning on the doorframe, one hand on the doorknob and the door already half-closed. But Tachibana knows he won't _really_ lock the door on him--right? "All right, moron, what are you doing here? Do you have any idea what time it is?" Hiiragi is rubbing his eyes as he speaks, stifling a yawn underneath his palms. But he doesn't have Tachibana fooled a whit--he's been up for a while, at least; the oversized T-shirt that Tachibana knows he sleeps in every night (although Hiiragi denies it with a will) is far less creased than it would be.  
  
"What are you doing up, then?" the brunette shoots back, looking and feeling inordinately pleased with himself. Hiiragi just sighs, and silence drops like a heavy, well-worn blanket between them. Tachibana pushes himself from the railing of the balcony and mutters some more expletives and not-so-subtle insults before settling against the wall next to the door, which, he notices, Hiiragi has finally let go of. "Where's that damn cat, anyway?" No matter the time of day, and whether he wants it or not, Shichi is usually there to greet him with an impudent stare and an imperious meowed welcome into his home.  
  
Hiiragi's bright eyes look gray, Tachibana notices, the way he's peering sideways into the darkened apartment. "Not here." Now he looks at Tachibana, expressionlessly. "Want to leave a message? I'll tell him you dropped by."  
  
"Shut up." The subtle, running playfulness has dropped from Tachibana's tone, and he frowns down at Hiiragi, wrinkling his nose as though he's finally beginning to puzzle out that something isn't as it should be.  
  
"What are you doing here?" Hiiragi asks for the umpteenth time, and Tachibana suddenly realizes that he doesn't know the answer, and probably wouldn't have found it even if he had remembered to think on it.  
  
Once again without waiting for an answer, Hiiragi turns away and disappears into the apartment, not even giving Tachibana the time to react before he's back with a basketball under his arm. And Tachibana _finally_ remembers waking up, an urge welling in his gut like an itch he can't scratch, a savage _need_ to grasp rubber and smell pavement, and sweat his heart out until he's dry and empty. He gets like that sometimes, and he suddenly wonders if Hiiragi does, too. And if Hiiragi, too, thinks of him when it happens, thinks of them together on the court and fighting a silent battle and sweating their souls into the pavement and the rubber and each other's will to win, an endless cycle of strength feeding on strength.  
  
And he wonders if Hiiragi would have wound up on _his_ doorstep, silently aching with the need to _play_.  
  
Tachibana doesn't voice any of this, of course. He's given Hiiragi his dose of insanity for the day, even though it seems the other scarcely needs it. "Are you going to play me in your pyjamas? Not that it wouldn't be interesting, but still..." he trails off just a bit sadistically. Just a bit.  
  
Hiiragi blinks and looks down, frowning at his attire as though he's just realized what he's wearing. Silently, he hands Tachibana the ball and the other waits patiently while he fumbles with the mess in his room like a blind man searching for a light. Once he's back, Tachibana merely starts walking without a backward glance; he knows Hiiragi can and will keep up. So Hiiragi can only blink in surprise when the brunette stops abruptly at the bottom of the steps, leaving him frozen in momentary confusion on the landing.  
  
"I was thinking..." Tachibana's smile as he looks up at him is brilliant. "Wanna go for a jog? Y'know, to warm up and all."  
  
The dawn wind and the ocean breeze both hold their breath for a moment of pure silence, as Hiiragi joins Tachibana and they move off together, steadily, errantly toward the sea.  
  
-  
  
They had planned to take the long way around to the school basketball courts, but into the midst of their detour comes the rain, the invisible kind that comes early in the morning, and leaves the people who awaken at a normal hour looking wonderingly at the patches of glistening darkness everywhere on the streets, silently asking themselves how they could have missed such a deluge.  
  
Hiiragi has never seen the early morning rains, because frankly, he doesn't see the point in getting up before he has to go to school.  
  
On the other hand, maybe his pragmatic view of the world really does have the edge over dreamers and poets, because this particular rain also accounts for his current situation of having to seek refuge in the rain. Under one of those old, musty bridges along the beach, with Tachibana Akane, of all people. Hiiragi silently curses the rain, yet at the same time he can't help marveling at how fresh the air is--and he wonders if this feeling is something like the feeling of being free; of not having to answer to anybody or anything. He wonders if this is how Tachibana feels when he just does what he wants.  
  
Tachibana is, has been and always will be a mystery to Hiiragi.  
  
For instance, at the moment he's sitting against one of the massive concrete supports under the bridge, looking like he hasn't a care in the world. Like he doesn't even care that they won't be able to practice now, even though that's the very reason he came to find Hiiragi in the first place. But Hiiragi can't have that serenity, that carefree mentality; he's silently raging against the morning, the rain, Tachibana, himself, everything that prevented the basketball match from taking place.  
  
"Stop it, idiot." He looks around in surprise to see Tachibana looking at him with dark eyes that seem to see right through him--not look through him the way many people's do. Funny how a difference of one little word could mean the world. "We can play basketball later--besides, I wanted to play too, and I always get what I want, remember?" And he smirks at Hiiragi like the end of the world is coming and he's intent on having a good laugh at it--who knows, maybe that's actually the case and nobody knows it but Tachibana.  
  
"Shut up, you moron," he snaps back, practically out of habit.  
  
More importantly, did Tachibana just read his mind? Hiiragi doesn't know and he doesn't know if he really wants to find out. So many things have changed since he came to know Tachibana. So many things about him and everyone else--or maybe it's just that Tachibana has taught him a new way to look at the world, but Hiiragi would stab himself with a dull knife before he would admit that the moron knows something he doesn't. Which is basically one big, fat lie all around, but lying to yourself, as Hiiragi has come to realize, is almost as natural as breathing. You can't help it. At least, until some big, fat idiot decides to come around and kick your head in.  
  
He laughs softly, unthinkingly, and behind him Tachibana just smiles and leans sideways out into the rain, absent-mindedly counting the number of raindrops he can catch on his tongue.  
  
-  
  
Akane didn't come out to meet her today.  
  
Sumire has dealt with his tardiness many times, but she's never really done anything about it; trying to deal with Akane is like trying to harness the wind and the tides, or a wildcat, perhaps; she smiles at the thought. The big idiot. Her big idiot, always late for school, trying to get her to lend him her math homework, losing track of everything important, especially the time. Lately, though...  
  
Sumire has dealt with Akane's moods, his obsession with basketball and disinterest in school. She has never had to deal with this. Every day, he seems to move farther away from her, and into a world where she cannot follow. She is working as hard as she can, working to rise with him to the top, but she knows that in this case, effort alone will not be enough. Basketball is something that is all his, a part of him that she will never be able to touch.  
  
Only one person has been able to reach that part of Akane, to stir that deep, slow, furious passion that he keeps locked up in all that laziness and lack of discipline.  
  
And that person, Sumire suddenly realizes, is with Akane right now, under the bridge fronting the sea. They are both asleep--no big surprise there--Akane leaning against the dark, damp concrete of the bridge support and snoring away uproariously. And at his feet, Hiiragi's bright head rests against blessedly dry ground like a quiet promise, like a butterfly delicately perched on a black rose.  
  
Sumire turns away, because she has also realized that this is one scene in which she has and should have no part. And has to stare, because at her feet is a dark brown cat with a disturbingly familiar gaze.  
  
_Tiling._  
  
"Hello, Mr. Cat," she says softly, wondering why she's doing so even as the words slip out of her mouth like the raindrops that only stopped falling moments ago. "Don't you think life is unfair?" That is all she says before the cat turns and slinks away, back the way Sumire came. That is all she will ever be able to say.  
  
_Tiling, tiling..._  
  
The only person who can rise with Akane to that high place... That person is Hiiragi Hitonari. Much as she loathes to admit it.  
  
On the basketball court, they are rivals, friends, teammates, partniers, two halves of the same whole and two sides to the same soul. Sumire wonders, though, as she walks on and away, whether they have figured out what they are off the court; whether they ever will. In moments like the one under the bridge... Do they even care, or is it just her?  
  
Sumire would really like to know, but she has a feeling that she will have no part in that, either.  
  
-  
_end_  
  
n.n;; I kind of like it... and I kind of don't.  
There's a couple layers to this fic--it actually started with Shichi (Hiiragi's cat). Again. 3 Everything starts with Shichi! adopts him as her I'll muse _Like Cat, Like Milk_ came out of the silly thought of, 'What if Tachibana didn't like cats?'  
Anyway, it all started when I got to thinking, 'What if Shichi ran away? Or just kind of disappeared for a while?' And it went on from there and sprouted into an oak tree. X3;; So it's, at the very base, a Tachibana-comforts-Hiiragi-for-the-loss-of-his-cat-by-distracting-him fic. Y'know where they go jogging? It's an excuse to go look for the cat... kinda. But Shichi does come back in the end, and gives Sumire space for a little last-minute character development.  
Can you tell I feel sorry for Sumire? I figured I'd give her a bit of a chance to vent.  
Plus I was being mean to her. --; Anyone who's read _Envy for the Octopus_, that last I'll special, can see how ironic it is, this Shichi-Tachibana-Hiiragi-Sumire thing. Y'know the bell sound? Yeah. That was a direct reference. Sort of a Tachibana-wasn't-there-for-Sumire's-cat-problems-but-was-there-for-Hiiragi's thing.  
Finally, there's the Tachibana/Hiiragi. nn;; It was _slightly_ explicit... and a little innuendo in there, if you will. X3  
Was that all too subtle in the fic? ; I seem to have a problem with that.  
Jeez... that was long and rambly and pointless. nn;;;  
  
X3 Hope you enjoyed! Tell me what you think, ne?


End file.
